For Republican predictions, the winner will be whoever gets the top 3 correct (Rep) and among those (if more than one person gets the order right) who has the closest match for %s. For Dems, the winner will be whoever gets 1st correct and among those (if more than one person gets the order right) who has the closest match for %s between the top 2.

Honorable mentions for anyone who gets the top 3 (in order) for Reps or 1st for Dems.

President Infinity v. Ericson – 2.2.4 for Windows and Mac has been released!

If you are a President Infinity owner, you are eligible for this upgrade.

Highlights:

This update is primarily for campaign designers. It fixes two bugs with the Editor, makes a few modifications to candidate attributes in 2016, and makes a few updates to endorsers in 2016.

What’s new in this upgrade

Editor > Polls > fixed bug where changing id for leader, party, or region didn’t carry over into the polls part of the percentages.xml file (Note: if you have created poll data, then modified id’s for a leader, party, or region before this version, you will have to manually go into the polls section of the percentages.xml file and update them, if you want to keep that poll data for the leader, party, or region in question)

Editor > Regions > fixed bug where changing id caused error

News stories > now says “has commanding lead” for a candidate, “have commanding lead” for a party

This post will keep track of changes to the upcoming version of President Infinity v. Ericson – 2.2.4.

Changes so far (this list will be updated as changes are implemented on this side, these changes will not be available until the version is released):

Editor > Polls > fixed bug where changing id for leader, party, or region didn’t carry over into the polls part of the percentages.xml file (Note: if you have created poll data, then modified id’s for a leader, party, or region before this version, you will have to manually go into the polls section of the percentages.xml file and update them, if you want to keep that poll data for the leader, party, or region in question)

Editor > Regions > fixed bug where changing id caused error

News stories > now says “has commanding lead” for a candidate, “have commanding lead” for a party

President Infinity v. Ericson – 2.2.3 for Windows and Mac has been released!

If you are a President Infinity owner, you are eligible for this upgrade.

Highlights:

Significant updates for the official 2016 campaign, with modified %s, starting funds, and attributes. Starting %s now can change with the start date, based on polling data which can be entered into the Editor. New maps can be imported into the Editor, and name and coordinates changed for regions. This update also fixes several bugs, including two bugs that occurred when loading a save game.

Here is what a game looks like starting on Jan. 1st for the Republican primaries right now, using the new polling feature. (Note: this is the latest internal version, it has not been released yet.)

You can ignore the Undecided %s, they aren’t set.

In cases where there is relatively recent (< 1 month old) state polling data, that is used. In other cases, the program uses the candidates’ national %s.

There are a lot of states without any recent public polling data. For example, what looks like a strong band of support for Trump in the deep south is actually an artifact of no polls except for Georgia, so the non-Georgia states are using the national %s.

Campaign designers can input real-world poll data, use aggregates as poll data if they so choose (such as Pollster or RCP) by treating them as a kind of poll, or simply make up their own poll numbers based on a best guess. The above map contains only actual polling data, again with national numbers used where no state numbers are available within 1 month of Jan. 1st. The national numbers are Reuters’, the only one with numbers for the week before Jan. 1st (and not also after that date).

30 days before Iowa’s caucuses on Feb. 1st, 2016! Iowa is the first state in the primaries calendar.

This means that each day is 3.3% of the remaining time before the first caucuses.

New Hampshire’s primary is Feb. 9th.

What are the big stories of the last 30 days? Here are three.

First, evangelical conservative support has coalesced around Ted Cruz, and he has replaced Ben Carson as the second-place candidate in national Republican polls and moved into first in Iowa. He has been helped by what seems a non-aggression pact between him and Trump – I would be interested to know exactly what is going on in this case, as it is crucial.

Second, Trump has continued to lead the Republican national polls, with his RCP average at 35% as of Jan. 1st (Cruz is at 19.5%). That’s 5 1/2 months in first place in the Republican primaries, defying almost all political pundits’ predictions on this matter. (The only relatively high-profile commentator I’m aware of who predicted this early on was Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. This is a case where an outsider seems to have expertise which ‘insiders’ (conventional political experts) don’t have. If you’re interested, Adams recently also predicted Trump would win the general election in a landslide.)

Third, on the Democratic side, the biggest story is probably that Sanders almost surpassed Clinton in non-Super-PAC fundraising in Q4 ($33.2M to $37M), and that he has retaken the lead in NH. It remains to be seen whether Trump will continue to target Clinton, and if so, whether that will help Sanders.